


Embrocation

by Janekfan



Series: TMA prompt fics [18]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Crying, Fever, Gen, Kidnapping, Manipulation, Mental Health Issues, Non-Consensual Touching, Restraints, Scars, Sickfic, Strained Relationships, Tears, Threatening, Threats of Bodily Harm, Tim is still very mad, Trauma, he takes it out on Jon, headache
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26400745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Janekfan/pseuds/Janekfan
Summary: Prompt fic: What if Tim was kidnapped by the circus with Jon?? They're having a bad time together; Tim is hostile. Eventually, Jon starts to get quieter, and Tim thinks he's in a mood. Jon complains of a headache, and Tim thinks he's being a baby. Until he finds out he's burning up and was just too afraid to say anything because he didn't think he could take Tim telling him he didn't care but he begrudgingly does!
Series: TMA prompt fics [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2082912
Comments: 42
Kudos: 333





	Embrocation

**Author's Note:**

> For TaylorTut who is amazing!

It was Tim who woke up first, unsure of where he was, still with the residual anger he’d had on his way to confront Jon about all of this _nonsense_ still burning incandescent. Hindsight being 20/20, he probably should have taken the anonymous tip on Jon’s location with a grain of salt and a fistful of caution but he was just so _angry_ it was filling him up like a poison, overflowing with nowhere to go, and it was so much easier to focus on his _boss_ because it was his fault they were in this mess. 

It was his fault Sasha was gone.

It was his fault they were all trapped. 

“T’Tim...” Barely an exhale and if the room they were contained in hadn’t been dead quiet, he’d ignore Jon. Still might. Let him sit in the guilt and shame of having inflicted whatever this was on yet another assistant.

If he even cared.

“Where...are we?” There was some light to see by, but not nearly enough to determine the answer to that even if he’d wanted to speak to him in the first place. Based on his own headache, Tim assumed that Jon had been knocked unconscious as well and corroborated it with the hiss of pain drawn sharply between his teeth. 

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking that?” Snapping callously and surprising even himself at the harsh bite in his voice, Jon flinched hard, turning with it to examine the space.

“We’re tied up.” He remarked, nonplussed, and Tim heard him pulling at his bonds. It wasn’t rope, but something softer and before he could think on it further a shaft of light fell upon Jon as a being, not quite a person, stepped through a door. “Nikola.” 

“Well acquainted are you?” Tim scoffed. 

“Not by choice.” And he didn’t look anywhere except straight at the thing he’d named, vitriol in his eyes, in the firm set of his jaw. 

“Oh, Archivist. Don’t be like that.” Her smile was inhuman, too many teeth, not quite right. “And please do stop frowning like that.” Jon turned away from the fingers claiming his chin and Tim had once been so close to him that he knew he didn’t like to be touched unless he trusted you. Like Tim had trusted him. “I want you in pristine condition for the show.” She snapped once and several mannequins surrounded and released Jon from his bonds. They tried to drag him through the door and Jon fought like a beast possessed, wild and feral and loud and no match for their sturdy yet gentle grip as they carried him off against his will. It left Tim alone in sudden silence, a little stunned and more than a little worried and he’d take that to his grave, thank you very much.

With nothing else to focus his attention on, Tim could only think of how awful Jon looked illuminated in that cold beam with that monster leering down at him. Could only think about how hard he fought before he was hauled away in cold, plastic hands and wondered if that was the last of him. 

But he was returned, quiet and haunted, still and silent when they tied him back down and resisting the water they held to his lips until they forced it on him by holding his nose, sputtering and hacking as they poured it down his throat. Calm, Tim took his ration, puzzling over his strange behavior and trying to get a closer look, but Jon just hid behind his overgrown hair, using it like a curtain to shield his face and visibly shivering. 

“Given up already?” He sneered, trying to get a rise out of him. 

He failed. 

Time waxed and waned, strained and stretched, dilating like a pupil in the dark whenever Tim tried to keep track of it. Eventually, he gave up. It didn’t seem like there was any rhyme or reason regarding when they took Jon, but he assumed it was at least once a day. Each time he raged against them with everything he had and each time they overpowered him like he was a child and hurried him off to god knows where. Each time he was tied back down he had an odd blank look in his eye that gradually cleared until it didn’t, trembling finely and Tim used it as a way to needle him, goad him, tried to make him do _something_ , anything. Without a response he didn’t know if he was getting through to him, but it made him feel better to take out his frustration on Jon. 

Days passed. Inexorably slow with nothing to do save yell at his sole companion. Jon still tried to make his taking as difficult as he could, but he was slowing down, losing strength on a diet of bread and sips of water. Now when he returned he shook with the effort of weeping without sound, turned away as far as he could and spilling sorrow down the front of his shirt. 

“Oh, little Archivist.” Nikola purred one day, lifting his face with a delicately placed fingertip. “Do you know why he hates you?” A new game they were forced to play. Because they were held captive by the Circus. And the Circus had taken Danny. And Tim screamed himself hoarse demanding answers from Jon when he'd been told. 

“You’re _lucky_ I’m tied down, Jon! I would take my answers by force if these fuckers would let me!” Jon never said anything other than apologies and it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t _fair_ and when Jon cried it made him that much more furious because what _right_ did he have to be upset when he was the one doing all this to them!

“We can’t have that, _Tim_.” She would smirk, placing her hands over his shoulders in a mock massage, tone soothing and so understanding. “We need him to be perfect.” 

“Perfect.” Tim spat. Perfect. And Jon shook harder at Nikola’s cryptic words until she turned her machinations toward Tim because, after all? If he’d kept a closer eye on his precious family, would he have lost him at all? 

“It’s really your fault if you think about it.” Tim tried his damndest to get closer, grappling so hard with his bonds he fell over and still tried to take a chunk out of her with his teeth. She merely laughed, ridiculing them both.

“Leave off!” Jon shouted, Tim’s chest was heaving against the floor as he twisted and bent himself into all manner of shapes in a fruitless attempt to attack her again, blind with rage and hate. 

“Only because you asked so nicely.” Nikola caressed his skin and Jon bit his lip until blood ran in rivelets but she left. 

“I’m so sor--”

“Save it. Don’t think this changes anything.” Uncomfortable and sore and still seething, Tim laid there until they came for Jon. 

Whatever they were doing was taking a visible toll and Jon’s resistance began tapering off and he became too tired to put up a fight. He’d developed a cough that kept them both awake. It began small, chronic and dry, but no less obnoxious and only Jon could find more ways to make this captivity more difficult. 

“Stop it.” Clipped and bitter. 

“Sorry, sorry. Smoking, you know.” Tim didn’t answer and Jon’s attempts to stifle it were sorely lacking, bursting from his chest like a gunshot. 

“You know what they want, don’t you.” Surprised, he looked up, nodding slowly, brow furrowed. “Well?”

“It’s. It’s.” Real fear raced across his face before he could stop it and he swallowed thickly. 

“Lemme guess. It involves you.” Tim’s ire began to rise because of course it did.

“Yes.”

“And you won’t just give it over to save us?” Jon looked away, eyes shut tight.

“No.” He tried to take a deep breath and it lodged somewhere in between. “But it’s becau--”

“Save it. Coward. It’s enough that you won’t consider it.” Resentful, Tim again wanted to get his hands on him because of course he’d refuse. There wasn’t a more selfish man in the archives. “So this is it then? We go the way of Sasha?” 

“I--”

“Because you didn’t help her either. Didn’t even _notice_.” It was his turn to hide because he’d be damned if Jon saw him cry. “Maybe if she’d been the Archivist, it would have been you.” 

Jon didn’t, couldn’t fight this time and was more lifeless than any time before when they secured him which seemed to please Nikola and she praised him, dragging fingers through his messy hair, pulling sharply on the tangles. 

“Ah, you’ve finally learned, Jon." And she tapped his cheek, sickeningly tender, before finally leaving him alone. 

“Giving up so soon?” Tim scoffed; ‘so soon’ being weeks into their capture when Jon was clearly exhausted, sleeping more and more in between waking enough to hack up a lung. He could hear the wheeze on his breath from where he was across the room. “Figures.” 

“Jus’… m'head hurts.” Laughing bitterly, Tim told him to keep it to himself. Dealing with Jon when he was in a mood or whining for the sake of it hadn’t made it onto his agenda. But the part that cared, that he’d tried to stamp out and fill with hate, reminded him that they were both dehydrated and hungry. 

Reminded him that Jon was getting quieter and quieter, going long stretches between speaking and this time when he was carried away, he was frighteningly lax and loose, head thrown back and gasping, overbright eyes half lidded. This time, when they dragged him back and tied him up, he was crying openly, shaking fit to fly apart and eerily quiet. But the tears were there, streaming down his face and gathering on his chin before his trembling got the better of them. 

“Jon?” If anything, he sobbed harder, the sound choked off as he tried so, so hard to be quiet. 

“Please s’stop, Tim.” And his whisper was so broken, so small and sad, that Tim shut his mouth, because Jon was at his breaking point and he’d helped push him to it. 

Now Tim couldn't stop looking at Jon and it made the other man self conscious when he was awake enough to notice, trying to keep his head turned away when he had the strength and it wasn't thrown back over the chair while he gasped like a fish out of water. 

The few times Tim caught him looking his way were fraught with weariness. Jon's red rimmed eyes, bruised and ringed with shadow, held a constant question and reminded him too much of his paranoia. Truthfully, the stare was heavy and he was uncomfortable with the weight of it leveled across his shoulders. 

"What're you staring at?" But it was a half-hearted attempt at inflicting hurt and Jon shrugged, blinking and a few times as if to clear his vision. 

"You okay?" It sounded like he'd been swallowing gravel, rough and low and painful. 

"What do you think?" And Tim couldn't stop responding in anger, swearing to himself that Jon's defeated expression meant less than nothing. 

Jon wasn’t well. 

He’d been unconscious for the better part of a day and Tim hadn’t been able to rouse him; shouting at him from the other side of the room wasn't enough but he tried once more out of desperation. 

“Jon, buddy. Jon!”

“Mmwha'Tim?” Cracked right in the middle, it was forced through a deep wet cough that sounded bad. Really bad. The effort left his narrow chest heaving with every difficult pull for air, like he was breathing through a straw. 

“Oh, thank god.” Even with the distance between them Tim could see his face twist up in confusion. “You weren't answering me.” 

“Talkin t'me?” Panting and pale in the weird light, Jon’s features seemed carved from shadow and sweat. 

“Yes, who else??” More than used to Tim’s frustration and annoyance, Jon just let his chin tip forward on his chest. “Jon, what's wrong.” 

“Head hur's.” Slurring badly, Jon gave up words altogether in favor of letting his dark lashes flutter closed. 

“You've said! What else?” Yelling and angry and helpless, the guilt rose in him like a slow and deadly tide when he saw tears slipping down his face. Tim was scared and he was mean, shouting and demanding, because of it. Because he thought he was done caring about this paranoid menace who had posed as his friend and gotten them into this mess. And he wasn't, oh he wasn't and something was seriously, seriously wrong and he was tied to a chair two meters away and couldn’t _do_ anything about it. “Jon! Don’t, hey! Don’t go to sleep!” But it didn’t matter, he was already gone. 

“Well, don’t you look tetchy.” Tim ignored Nikola’s jab the next time she and her clowns came to visit and through a surge of protectiveness he hadn’t felt in so long for anybody, he spoke on his behalf. 

“Please. Jon, he. Something’s wrong.” She didn’t look impressed. 

“He’s stopped his fighting.” 

“Let me check on him. Whatever you need him for, he won’t be any use if he’s dead, right?” Nikola laughed, cruel smile striking fear into Tim’s heart for the first time. 

“It wouldn’t matter, truly. But. Well," grabbing a fistful of hair, she forced his head back and forth to get a good look at him. "I just don’t think he’s done yet. And that would be a shame--I do so wish to look my best.” Tim was no closer to figuring out what was happening but it didn’t matter anymore. “I assure you, if you try to run.” 

“I won’t.” Swiftly promised, they’d escape another time. Somehow, someway. “Untie us?” 

“Us?” She chuckled and in the end, only released Tim but it would have to do, and once he was sure she was well and truly gone, he stumbled on numb legs to stand over him.

“Jon?” Gently, like he might break under the weight of his hand, Tim laid it over his forehead, brushing back through his tangled hair when the heat of it met his palm. He was a furnace, burning away to nothing and very sick. “Jon?” He tore a strip off the bottom of his shirt, wiping away the sweat because there was nothing else he could do until he finally came around. “Hey, Jon.” Jerking away with enough force that Tim had to catch the chair, he coughed with his shoulders hunched around his ears like--

Like Tim was going to strike him. 

“Oh, no, no.” What a mess they’d made. “Hey, none of that.” When he went to apply the compress again, Jon flinched, shaking, muttering breathlessly: 

“Don’touch, please, don’touch me any’anymore. Pl’please.” So now he was free, free to see up close the terror and fear, faced with it plainly enough to question that Jon wanted any of this at all, or if he was just as caught in it’s spiraling web. He wore himself out, body slumped uncomfortably where he was tied as he lost consciousness and Tim was at a loss as to what to do. He wasn’t able to pick apart the knots, didn’t have anything to slice through his bonds. No medicine, no water. Nothing, and so he finally relegated himself to pounding on the door, shouting, pleading for water because Jon was out of his mind with fever and wouldn't let Tim touch him. Of course it went unanswered, and instead he found himself sitting crisscross at Jon’s feet. “Don’...don’touch…”

“I won’t, I promise. Not, not until you say I can.” Wringing his hands, remembering every time they'd helped each other through a sick day at the institute. Remembering when he was free to touch and free to comfort. Jon ruined that. But it shouldn't mean he was afraid of him. 

“T’tim?” The whimper of recognition made the fist around his heart squeeze. “They...they’re. My skin. Take it. G’g’gonna _take_ it.”

“Calm down, you’re not making sense.” And shaking so hard with chills his teeth were chattering. 

“It’s going to, to _hurt _. She, Ni-she.” Worked up, Jon was hyperventilating, barely getting any air between his coughing and rambling but he wouldn’t listen to Tim. “It’s, it’s. I, I, I don’wan’to h’hurt anymore…” Delirious, he had to be, paranoid and ill and delusional and he said as much.__

__“Okay, Jon? That’s not going to happen.”_ _

__“Why Tim!” Nikola’s delighted voice rose up behind him and he startled. “He didn’t tell you? This ritual requires a special ingredient, a costume! Of special power and distinction and you,” she tapped his forehead sharply, “just don’t fit the bill!”_ _

__“Costume?”_ _

__“Of course!” When she clapped her hands together it made a sharp plastic clatter. “Our Archivist here will have the most lovely skin when we’re through with him.” Tim felt sick to his stomach. Jon. He’d. He’d called him a coward. Wished _awful_ things on him and maybe it would be impossible to be friends again but, but they’d been friends once. Been close once. And. _ _

__“Please. He, he needs water.” His voice shook. “His--” _skin_ “It’ll be better if he’s had enough water.”_ _

__“A wonderful idea!” She turned away from where she was tracing lines over his body, “to think I wanted to kill you upon arrival, when you’ve been so useful in keeping our mutual friend in line!”_ _

__

__“Slow, slow Jon.” He pulled the cup away when it seemed he’d try for the whole of it at once, “you’ll make yourself sick.”_ _

__“T’Tim...need.”_ _

__“I know, be patient.” Jon’s brown eyes were piercing even glassed with fever, all his limited focus directed at Tim._ _

__“N’no.” He paused to get enough breath to speak. “Run. You n’need to run.” Days ago, Tim would have done so in a heartbeat but the thought of abandoning him now. He couldn’t._ _

__“I cant.”_ _

__“ _Tim_ ” _ _

__“No, not without you.” His gaze was devastating and he dropped his head._ _

__“ _Why?_ ” He didn’t have an answer and thankfully didn’t need one because at that very moment a yellow door appeared where one had never been before and through it stepped a man who both was and wasn’t, face ever changing, limbs elongating in strange intervals and he had to look away. _ _

__“I’ve come to kill you, Archivist.” A distorted echo that was also not an echo filled up the room._ _

__“Get in line, you’re not the only one who wants a piece.” The being seemed taken aback, tickled that a human would even dare, and Jon used the gap in their conversation to draw its attention._ _

__“Michael.” The thing that was Not What It Is shifted focus, oil on water. “Tell me.” And while Jon couldn’t say anything more than that, he did and instead of killing the archivist, Helen saved him, using sharp fingers that warped and writhed to slice the bonds and send him sprawling to the ground. Or would have, if Tim hadn’t caught him. He wouldn’t respond to Tim’s shaking and shouting and when Helen offered to grant them both safe passage as a favor to her favorite Sims (her only Sims, Tim figured) he lifted him into his arms and stepped through the door._ _

__And into his own flat._ _

__“Do tell him I say hello, would you?”_ _

__“Uh, yeah. ‘Course.” Awkwardly, he waved with his arms still full of Jon. “Thanks.” When he was sure his flat had only the same number of doors it came with, he laid his burden down on the couch, heading to the medicine cabinet for any fever reducer he could find and filling a glass with water on the way. It took too much time to wake him and he wasn’t aware enough to parse the instructions Tim was trying to explain, that dreadful whistling almost deafening this close and the crackling in his lungs like dry leaves in autumn. So he propped him up against his shoulder, body blazing through their clothes, and slipped the pills onto his tongue one at a time so he could swallow them with small sips. Replacing himself with several pillows shoved behind him, Tim wrung out a cool flannel and smoothed it over his forehead, ignoring the sluggish, enquiring gaze until it disappeared behind heavy lids and his face relaxed into sleep._ _

__There wasn’t anything in the fridge that survived his absence save for the bicarbonate of soda and beyond that, Tim didn’t want to take a chance opening anything. The bread was moldy, but a packet of biscuits with peanut butter helped dull the hunger and, though he would never admit it, gave him a reason to stay up to watch over Jon. Flushed and fevered, he mumbled nonsense in his sleep, and Tim recognized enough that he soon decided not to listen, the horror of it too much to bear just yet. He fell into his own bed, relaxing sore muscles and glanced at the clock blaring too bright numbers that he didn’t want to read, his last conscious decision that they’d been gone this long, what was one more night before telling everyone else they weren’t dead._ _

__

__The sun, blessed _sun_ , fell across his face and he let himself have a lie in until he remembered who was passed out on his couch and he dragged himself towards responsibility, a knot of apprehension tight in his throat, relaxing when Jon looked, well, not _well_ , but better. Apparently sensitive to being watched, their eyes collided briefly before ricocheting away and Tim was irritated by it and the way Jon was avoiding him again. _ _

__“Why didn’t you tell me you were that sick?” Though Tim stood over him, Jon continued to look at his hands, tracing a finger over the rough scar spanning his whole palm. He took his time, thinking, so long that when Tim shouted “well?!” he jumped, eyes wide, breath catching._ _

__“You. You said.” Coughing into his elbow, he needed a moment to recover. “Said t’to keep it to myself.”_ _

__“When you were complaining about a _headache_!” Jon shrugged with one shoulder, curling into himself small and fragile, somehow more so in the late morning light. _ _

__“Didn’t think--”_ _

__“No, you didn’t, you never do, Jon!”_ _

__“--you’d want to know.”_ _

__“Jon.” But would he have wanted to know? Would he have ignored it like he had his anguish? What reason had Tim given him when he’d used everything he experienced in that room and out of it as a weapon against him? Jon was looking up at him, wan and pallid, waiting for whatever Tim had to say and he knew he would take it like he’d taken it in their captivity. He sat on the low table in front of the couch. “Jon. I’m. You know I’m angry with you.” He nodded. “I’m sorry for, I took it too far. But, I’d still have wanted to know.” He pressed the next dose of medicine into his unblemished hand and made sure the water glass was within reach. “Take those.” Before he slipped into the kitchen and away from their shared mistakes, but he could still hear._ _

__“Thank you, Tim.”_ _

__“Oh,” he popped his head back into the sitting room. “Helen says hello.” And chuckled when Jon threw an arm over his eyes with a groan._ _

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prime example of "I was feeling awesome as I wrote this, but it is now absolute trash I'm sure of it" :D


End file.
